Spain and France: geography of hate

From all passions and human emotions, hate is one of the most wretched. Through hate, the individual impoverishes his human potential and he becomes a machine devouring his own species. And hate, they say, generates hate. Of course, if everybody applied the “eye for eye”, the World would become blind very quickly. Because of that, to fight hate, we must identify it first, to face it with the most implacable weapon: bluntness.

Because hate is, above everything else, an illness. But, can it be cured? Of course it is.

Catalonia is found literally under siege by two countries that are the life reincarnation of hate. From one side, the West, there is the project “Spain”, an artificial country built –and still is- on a fundamental pillar: hate to difference. There is no surprise, then, that Spaniards have always called Catalans as “the Jews of the peninsula”. Among us, what kind of ethical and democratic guarantee can bring a country that considers being Jewish as an insult? Now, it results that who dress themselves as democrats were pioneers in Nazism a lot earlier than Hitler himself started his exterminatory foulness across Europe!

May be because of that, Spaniards exterminated 100 million Amerindians and rested so chuffed. It is no casual, then, that the dictator Franco had plans for deportation of all Catalans, like the Jews in the Middle Ages, to African territories, to exile us from our natural land.

Today, it is cause of embarrassment to observe like certain class of political leaders continue to negotiate and pact with this Spanish political project, which has never officially apologised to Catalans and has never repaired the historical hatred which has subjected us, including current times. Or, did anybody believed that the soap opera of the budget that we are suffering is an innocent political game, normal in the 21st Century? Hatred, when it is a matter of pouring it over Catalonia is nothing but innocent.

On the other hand, in the North, there is France, a State which, with the fallacy of erect themselves as the country of the “Man’s Rights”, has found a perfect excuse to canalize their hate to difference throughout all known hostilities. Since the edict by Louis XIV, valid from 1700, where he proclaimed “the usage of Catalan disgusts” and the last declarations by Georges Frêche, where literally, he said, “Catalans make me defecate”, can somebody believe that there are 350 years between both statements?

Nevertheless, Catalans had to stand by the ignominious performance by UNESCO, where the petition made by France to recognise marshal Vauban’s military fortresses as World Heritage succeeded, by the way, with the complicity of UNESCO-Cat. It was the first time that UNESCO, by petition of the Country of the “Man’s Rights”, considers as World Heritage a genocide. Do we have to remind them that Vauban, under royal orders, set fire to the original Catalan villages, humiliated Catalans by making them build those fortresses with their own hands, with the stones of their own houses, to then, imprison them if they have not executed them first? Who, with sound mind, would consider World Heritage “el Valle de los Caidos” or the nazi extermination camps?

How to face hate?

Hate, as I have said earlier, is an illness. And yes, this illness has a cure. Not so much by whom has it inside but by whom suffers its consequences. Hate does not need to generate hate. Everything is more simple than that. Hate is fought, simply, with bluntness. With bluntness and without contemplations. In this case, with Catalan bluntness.

Neither France nor Spain, we see it enough, have never asked for apologies for the historical hate spread against Catalonia. They will not ask for them, either, for the hate that they show, even today, for the difference that we, the Catalans, represent. This stubborn and obstinate difference to not let them assimilate us and that define those Nations that they know how to win the destiny that History claims for them.

Because this is Catalonia. The country that has lost wars, yes, but has never lost a battle. Do you understand now why I say that Catalans are a winner Nation? Otherwise, we could not say that we, still, are Catalans. If hate is always looking for the way to minimize the other by ridiculzation, humiliation and insult, when it finds a proud Catalonia, shooting bluntness throughout, hate disarms and becomes a common tamed little sheep.

But nobody think that to fight hate, political attitudes of housemaid, quite usual among the Catalan politicians over the last decades will be enough. No. Facing hate reclaims political leaders ready to act bluntly, with a bluntness only used by whom has not complex of slave in front of who wants to minimize them. Leaders who think, speak and act with State vision –Catalan State-, in the country or overseas. Leaders expressly to fight the fierce dialectical battle that the secessionist way will claim victory from.

Did you like to see an example? Do not miss the periodical interventions of Santiago Espot in the TV program “Catalunya Opina” on Canal Catala. You will see there how to face anti-Catalan racism is not only a game and which is the way, in fact the only way, to make all those who dare to attack Catalonia walk back to their trenches converted in common tamed little sheep from a farmyard.

Albert Ubach
Member of Catalunya Acció